Disability assistance in Scotland: consultation - easy read

Moving to the New System

There will be three types of Disability Assistance for different ages: young people, working age people and older people.

Too many changes at once would make creating the new system complicated and people might not get paid correctly or on time. We must make sure payments continue to be made on time when benefits change.

Some of the changes we have planned:

Assessments:

• Social Security Scotland will deliver assessments.
• Assessments will look at each person's own situation.
• People will have a choice over the day and time of their assessment. Home visits will be available.
• We will collect information which supports an application and will let people know what will support a claim.
• We want to reduce reassessments.

After the assessments:

• People will get a copy of the assessment report with their decision letter
• We will explain how we made the decision and what information we used

Application:

• The application process for Disability Assistance will be easy to use.
• We will make sure that all communication and information is clear and easy to understand.

Young People 16-18:

• We will give children and young people Disability Assistance up to the age of 18 if they get the benefit before they turn 16. This means that people will not have to apply for a new benefit when they are moving between child and adult services.

Terminal Illness:

• Under special rules a terminally ill person's application will be handled more quickly so they can get the highest level of award they are entitled to.
• Medical staff can decide when a person can claim under these special rules.

Advocacy Services:

• Disabled people will have a right to independent advocacy.
• We are developing 'advocacy service standards'.

Accessible Communication:

• We will communicate with people in a way they can understand.

We want to make changes as soon as we can. But we have to take time to do things properly, to make sure that people are paid the right money at the right time.

We will make sure that applying for Disability Assistance is as easy as it can be. We want to make sure that the whole process is clear and that people understand how and when we will deal with their claim.